


nightfall

by thehuntress_88



Category: Bleach
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Post-Chapter 686: Death & Strawberry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 10:01:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15070763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehuntress_88/pseuds/thehuntress_88
Summary: it's dizzying without her. but for once, the world finally slows down for him. still, it's not as he expected it to be. it never is. (the sun sets for everyone else while the rain starts to pour for ichigo.)





	nightfall

**Author's Note:**

> cross posted from tumblr with some slight modification. this was written on a whim while listening to [this](https://youtu.be/i0LRtNwiORY), and is basically a ficlet concerning ichigo's feelings. enjoy!

it’s a fleeting whisper. an effervescent, fragile thing that bubbles up to his chest as soon as the sky was set aflame by the light of a sinking sun.

this.

_sunsets._

it wasn’t theirs, he thinks as he watches the rosy slashes of fire, small curls of dark violet beginning to chase them at their very edges. but at the same time, he’d like to think it was.

_why now?_

_why now, after all these years?_

porcelain skin bathed by fiery amber. violet eyes mirroring splendid red.

beautiful, he thinks. was it something he could ever stake his claim on?

no, she was never something to claim. she was strength, and she was power. she was fury, and she was calm. she was fire, and she was ice. she was . . . she was something completely beyond his grasp.

those brilliant streaks of color fade gracefully, giving way to the first trickle of darkness. and as the moon rises in all its glory, what used to be small and wispy swells in his chest into a tempest of something he knows he's not ready to face. all he’s aware of is how heavy it feels, how dense, _how suffocating_. it feels like he can’t breathe, and _oh God_ , it threatens to consume him.

(but he knows, he knows deep within his soul that he had let it creep on swift and steady feet behind his heart under the veil of the quiet night.)

he lifts his eyes to glance at the white moon, as fair and majestic as she was. as unreachable as she was.

his breath hitches in his throat.

 _no._ he couldn’t be thinking about this, not when he has a loving wife and a beautiful son to call his own. not when she has a doting husband and a precious daughter to call her own.

but the ache that weighs and throbs in his chest begins to _burn_ , and all he can think of is _her_. she who saved him, she who stopped his rain, she who didn’t know she held every ounce of him within the palm of her pale, pale hand, his entire soul and his entire heart.

he doesn’t dare take his eyes off the moon as he basks in its presence, in the thoughts of what could have been, what should have been.

he wonders if, at this moment, they’re looking at the same sky. 

he doesn’t dare speak her name because it brings back too much. because all those years ago, he’d seen how softly she would gaze at him when she thought he wasn’t looking, because he’d felt how she gently would hold him when she thought he didn’t notice.

he doesn’t dare speak her name because it is too much.

but that terrible, dull ache that had wrapped itself around his heart uncoils, drags itself upwards towards his throat, all the way past his lips, and before he knows it, he utters her name in a small, broken voice that betrayed years and years of desperate longing, longing he had so furiously tried to shut into the smallest, darkest corner of his heart that he ignored no matter how much it begged and screamed to be let out.

“rukia.”

 

(the dawn comes, and with the unforgotten strength of a seasoned warrior he reins it all in. returns to quietness, stillness. but with a final glance at the sky, he silently pleads with the cold moon to pretend that it’s seen nothing, heard nothing.

and the pale, secretive moon consents.)

**Author's Note:**

> i absolutely love orihime and i think kazui is quite adorable, but i detested chapter 686. as you can see, this is in no way a fix-it fic because for some reason, i couldn't summon the mood for it while writing this. neither is this an adultery!fic because as enjoyable as it can be when it stays in fic (for the sole reason that it gives some sense of vengeance to kubo's apparent assassination of characterization), i personally don't think it's fair to orihime, renji, kazui, and ichika. to be honest, i think every single character deserved better in that ending, not just ichigo and rukia (but that's a rant for another day). in the meantime, i hope you enjoyed this compromise between the two extremes!


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